Dear Friends,
Oh, I just now read Mike’s introduction, and it is so important. He states:
“In general, the Russian word, obuchenie, refers to a double-sided process, one
side of which does indeed refer to learning (a change in the psychological processes and knowledge of the child), but the other of which refers to the organization of the environment [an important focus of the Golden Key Schools] by the adult, who, it is assumed in the article under discussion, is a teacher in a formal school with power over the organization of the children’s experience. So in that context, for those purposes, obuchenie is most adequately translated as “instruction” or “teaching.”
The discussion moves to the ZPD, and Wolff-Michael and others have valuable thoughts. At this point, it would also be interesting to really research who has written about the ZPD in the past, and share that information. I am sending an article by Nik Veresov, which really helps to understand the general genetic law of cultural development. In order to better understand the ZPD, perhaps more thoughts on the Golden Key Schools could be published in some journal, where we could begin from a different direction….to study an actual model used in Russia in order to see how it fits all of our descriptions. I offered to send out a translation of a Russian text on the Golden Key schools, and forgive me, but that is not the correct thing to do right now. There are a number of people who know the Golden Key Schools, and within the next two months I (or anyone) could try and find some appropriate texts from our Russian colleagues, including the text I
mentioned earlier. The problem, as always, is the translation of the materials. This is just an idea. In closing, I would like to give one of the best definitions of the ZPD I know of, which transcends the school setting: Lois Holzman (1997). Schools for growth. Mahwah, NJ.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
“A ZPD is a form of life in which people collectively and relationally create developmental learning that goes beyond what any individual in the group could learn on her or his own. Our effort is to create continuously overlapping ZPD's, a particular relational activity that simultaneously is and makes possible the transforming of rigid behavior (forms of life that have become alienated and fossilized) into new forms of life.” (p. 71) [bold throughout, my emphasis]. The ZPDs within the Golden Key Schools totally transcend the school setting......
Dot
Attachment:
ZPD_Veresov.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document
_______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca